Campaign entries - Caspian: Marooned in Mushrooms, ch3 - imprisoned in perfume - 783 words

The world flooded back to Caspian like a wave crashing to the shore. He gasped for air as the heat squeezed him in its grasp, choked him from all over. Was he really that weak? Was he so frail that a little bit of warmth sent him down to his knees? Every muscle in his body felt like they were imbued with lead. When the eternal tried to stand up, leaning away from the wall he was propped against, his attempt was cut short. He couldn't move - not much. Why couldn't he move?

 

It was a stupid question. He knew why - but none of it made a difference in that moment. Panic started to shut it all out, and its seal was watertight. Out of desperation and inescapable terror, Caspian thrashed his arms and body around, screaming like an idiot. The reinforced cuffs that held him chained to the wall didn't budge. In just seconds, the eternal had spent all the energy he had to spare, as the cell enclosed around him mocked his figure - so weak, so slender, so thin. Good-for-nothing. Useless.

A stare flashed on the inner surface of his closed eyelids, as Caspian pressed his skull against the prison wall. He would've bashed his own head in if his body would've let him. Just to make it stop.

 

Just so his mind would shut up. So it would stop running after tangents.

 

Tangents like this.

 

He remembered a gaze, as big as it was kind. His mind held onto it like it would wither away if it didn't.

 

They were so green, his eyes. Vibrant. Where was their color?

 

Caspian curled into a ball as much as the cuffs let him. The heat burned his eyes as it forcibly evaporated the tears from his eyes, before they even left his tear ducts properly. It wasn't the fact that he was imprisoned. It wasn't the cell, so strange and excessive he had never experienced such before. Not the assumption that it was all his fault again, that he got everyone captured, as per usual.

 

It was what held him in place. He could've sworn that the insides of the cuffs held knuckles, the bones' sharp edges digging into his skin. A comfortless sob escaped Caspian's throat, but he clasped his jaws together with a whimper. It felt like the manacles tightened with every beat his heart skipped in its uncontrollable dread.

 

Just like his mother's hands around his wrists. Her pungent perfume stung in his lungs. Her fine, light mouse brown hair hampered his vision, as she loomed over him.

 

And she screamed. Denounced her own son. Called him names. Told him how useless he was. How he didn't do anything he was told.

 

How he was just as pathetic as his father. Yes, dad was with the angels now. He had always said that the boy had inherited the mother's wrath. Caspian could see the resemblance, even if he didn't want to.

 

But Caspian's over boiling anger could never match Julie's unhinged rage. Just having the audacity to ask what she meant with angels that one single time almost killed him. She could've carved those heinous stubs out of his skull with her bare hands. Just to show him what not hiding them when told could lead to. She could've torn him to shreds just to teach him a lesson. Just to make him learn to regenerate better. Faster. More efficiently. Every act she could justify, and every single one of them only made sense when twisted just the right way.

 

Was it really her that took the only kind adult he knew from him? Why would she? A fabricated image drew itself into the middle of Caspian's mind, drowning out everything else. A slender woman held a lifeless body in her arms. More massive than her own body could ever be. It wasn't her husband - it was a trophy. Pillaged of his breath, and the vibrancy of his eyes. The boy was now alone. Fully at her mercy.

 

The disgustingly sweet, nonexistent scent of the woman's perfume mixed with the cell's heat. It felt like it pressed itself against Caspian's multicolored hide, to remind him of his smallness - even within his adult frame, he wasn't enough for her.

 

For the image of her.

 

Caspian swallowed his sobs to the best of his ability, pressing further into the wall he was chained into. Silence was his only ally. Had been for so long - even if it could turn against him under her fiery gaze.

 

A gaze that wasn't there. Even in her absence, she held him by the throat.

 

And how easy it was to push those talons even deeper.